A butterfly flits earnestly—
box to bag, drug to dairy, produce
to poultry—prodding the random and
haphazard parade onward to the tireless
tempos of the checkout scanner’s beep.

True, it’s only a tattoo,
needled into that soft place
between index finger and
thumb at the back of the hand,
but the girl with the sparkling eyes
wears it like a badge, an emblem
of promise and possibility.

Her line is always longest,
conversation there always
freshest, the laughter
always freest. She rises up
like an oasis in an otherwise
dry and dreary domain.

After a bruising bout with fortune
and fate, I, too, am drawn to her
this day, not by concerns for speed
or efficiency, far less by fantasies
of seduction or allure, but by a simple
need to witness that healers still
mingle among us to breathe our air
and touch our wounds.

( Celebrating the Light ought not diminish
our compassion for those suffering the dark.)

They were the benchmarks
by which she reckoned her life—
order, cleanliness, God.
Supper at five, always at five;
socks, underwear, towels,
carefully ironed, meticulously folded;
windows washed inside and out,
once a month, spring through fall;
daily mass, daily rosary, daily
invocations to keep her kids
safe, to keep her kids good.

And her house was clean, her kids
were good. Everyone noticed.
Everyone said so. Except, perhaps,
her husband who didn’t say much
of anything but worked hard,
didn’t drink, didn’t hit her, but
didn’t love her as an untidy
imagination said he should.

One day, when her kids were grown and
emptiness had soundproofed the house,
she crawled under a bare kitchen table
and proceeded to tear at her face
and pull out her hair while
her husband dozed
in the other room
after a long, hard day.

We needed our house painted, my wife and I—walls, ceilings, all the rooms. At seven decades and counting, joints, eyesight, and medicine cabinet all testified to the insanity of doing the job myself. So, for the first time, I hired a painter—a friend of a friend of a friend. Right about now, connoisseurs of creative writing might be looking for some detail: number and size of rooms; anxieties over color choices; perhaps a catalogue of mishaps, pratfalls or spillage.

But here is what I have: memories of conversations. Brian told me about a fire that took all his possessions; about keeping vigil with a friend who was dying; about experiencing a love that is transforming his life. We talked about the impermanence of things, the sacredness of life, openness to surprise, the importance of living in the “now.” We talked about values, life, love and the wonder of it all.

I listened carefully to Brian and saw the pooling in his eyes as he shared his soul stuff, and I knew with a heart kind of knowing, that my home, and the living presence that abides there, had received more than a fresh coat of paint that day.